Writing Excuses 21.24: Deconstructing the Seven Point Plot Structure

[mbarker]

Writing Excuses 21.24: Deconstructing the Seven Point Plot Structure 

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-24-deconstructing-the-seven-point-plot-structure

Key Points: Hook: introduce the characters. Plot point one: call to action. Pinch one: add pressure to the characters, forcing them to act. Midpoint: change from reaction to action. Pinch two: more pressure on the characters. Plot point two: I know how to win. Resolution: I've won! Hook, reason to care. Hook mirror to resolution. Hook, spiky bit and barb. Story question, story problem. Plot point helps on journey to resolution, pinches get in the way. The lie the character believes. Try-fail cycles and pinch points. Losing your mentor. Pinch narrows options. 

[Season 21, Episode 24]

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 21, Episode 24]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Deconstructing the Seven Point Plot Structure.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] And we have been talking this season about different forms of plot structure. I asked Dan if he would come in and talk to us about the seven-point plot structure, which is one of my favorite plot structures. But I have to go back and look at my notes every single time that I use it...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And Dan is the person who introduced me to it. So...

[Dan] So I deigned to come back...

[laughter]

[Dan] No. I'm very excited to be here. Glad to be recording with you again. So, seven point plot structure, that's my name for it. I don't know if it has an official name. It is essentially a TV writing formula for writing TV episodes. Which I found through a Star Trek RPG and turned into a class, which turned into a YouTube channel, and arguably more people know me for that than for my actual books. But it is a system that I still use. As a very quick overview of it, because we're going to spend the rest of the episode, I assume, taking it apart, it is seven points. It starts with a hook, and then a... Which is basically introducing the characters. Plot point one, which is more or less the call to action. Then there is pinch one, which is adding pressure to the characters. Forcing them to act. The midpoint, which is where things change from reaction to action. Then there is pinch two, which is another put pressure on the characters. Plot point two, which is, like, I've figured out how to win. And then the resolution, in which they win. And I've got a whole YouTube series you can look up. It is so old that it's back in the day when YouTube videos were limited to 10 minutes. And so it's actually broken into five pieces. There's obnoxious intro and outro music. It was just filmed live at a con. But it gives a very good overview of what the system is and how it works. And if you're not familiar with seven points, go watch those videos and then come back and listen to the rest of this episode.

[Mary Robinette] So, the thing that I love about it, is that when I use it, it helps me spot opportunities. But I wanted to dig into kind of the why it works aspect. So, in a lot of things we see some form of hook. I have been attempting to relabel this for myself, because I... I'm always like what's the difference between pinch point and plot point?

[Dan] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Which one? So, hook. I find that a lot of people think that the hook has to be really flashy. And for me, I've been relabeling it in my own head as the reason to care. That sometimes people are like, well, we're going to establish the characters and their starting state, and so either you wind up with something that's in media res, and you don't have any idea what's going on because they focused on the hook part of this, or you find something that is actually pretty boring because nothing... It's like just the character waking up and going about their day. So, when you're thinking about hook, what are you thinking about when you're shaping that?

[Dan] I think of hook as a mirror to resolution. It is a starting state, and it is an ending state. So, really what you're doing with the hook is you are setting up a character arc. Where is this character going to start, because that lets me know where the character's going to go. I actually usually think of the resolution first. I build stories... I build the story backwards when I use this. Where do I want my character to end? What's the opposite state of that? So I want Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star and become a hero. What's the opposite state? Well, he is not a hero, he does not have a lot of agency of his own, we're going to set him on a farm in the middle of a desert where he has to do chores all the time. But he's dreaming of something else. And that dream is the key part. Because like you said, if it just started with here's a kid on a desert planet, that would be boring. And it's worth pointing out, that's not how the movie starts.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] The movie starts by showing you here's the big villain that we need to defeat. And so then you get to the kid, and, like, the first thing we see of him, he buys the droids or whatever, but then we see him staring off into space and he's looking at the two suns setting. He wants to do something more. And it is that desire that is really his starting state. Not so much living on a farm, not so much doing chores, but dreaming of something bigger. And that's the hook that pulls you in. It is, is this kid going to be able to fulfill his dream?

[Howard] I really like the term hook, because I feel like the beginning of whatever it is that I'm making needs to have hooked people. They need... A hook has a couple of components. One of the components is the spiky bit, the bit... The Star Destroyer is that spiky bit. It's got your attention. It is telling you a thing and you can't not pay attention to that call. And then learning about Luke and seeing this contrast between Star Destroyer and farm boy... That's the barb on the hook, for me, that says, oh, there's a conflict here and I need to see how it turns out and I can't get this hook out of me, I have to finish this movie. Or this book, or whatever.

[DongWon] I think of a hook having two stages. Right? The first is like the first... Yeah, the initial sort of like hit, and then when you're fishing, you need to set the hook. Right? Like, there is that jerk, that like gets the hook in a position that is going to be long lasting. Right? I don't fish. Don't yell at me if I'm wrong.

[laughter]

[Howard] But you are established, and your writing is violent.

[Dan] True.

[Mary Robinette] I have to confess here. And I probably... I can't believe we are this deep into writing excuses before I confess that for years, I thought a hook was referring to a shepherd's hook. And...

[DongWon] There's also, you need to get the shepherd's hook in position and then you need to yank them off stage. So...

[laughter][yeah]

[Mary Robinette] I think we... It's specifically about steering the sheep to where you want it to be.

[DongWon] That's interesting. I've always thought about a fishing hook.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And it is, like, as a metaphor, these cause you to do different things.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] It's... So. Anyway. I'm just like, huh, all of these things don't have the barb. I... Like, I had realized at some point that people were talking about fishing. Anyway.

[DongWon] Yes, I think when we talk about the hook, there are the two parts. Right? There's the initial sharp bit, and then the setting of the hook. And I think the difference between what Howard was talking about and what, Dan, you're talking about are the two stages of that. The first stage is to mirror the resolution of the, like, Death Star plans attack on the Alderaan and all that, and then, when it's set, it's the character. Like, the thing that you're saying about what do we care about. We care about Luke's journey, we care about how Luke sees himself and the journey he's going to go on to become this epic hero. Right? And so, the two stages there I think are really important to that also.

[Dan[. Yeah. Very much so. And Howard hit it on the head when he talked about conflict, because I think that... To me, that is the most important element of fiction is conflict. And that's what I believe gets people hooked into a story, is not so much here is a kid in a desert, but here's a kid in a desert who doesn't want to be in a desert. Suddenly you have a conflict, suddenly you have something. And what you're talking about, I think of as the difference between a plot conflict and a character conflict. Which is not necessarily a part of seven-point structure. But you can kind of see it. And I think of the hook as this is where we begin our character arc, our character conflict. Luke is one thing and he wants to be a different thing. Will he succeed in that journey? And then the next step, plot point one, that's where we start our plot conflict. That's where he finds the message from Leia and he talks to Ben Kenobi, and he's like, there's this big adventure out there that is waiting. There's a princess that needs to be saved, there's a giant evil fortress gun that we need to blow up. And that's what starts him on his adventure. But we only really care about the plot adventure because we care about his character arc and who he is.

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things that when... That we see when we're talking in fiction is the issue of when these things happen. With movies, with TV, a lot of times these are rigidly described as the number of pages into a plot... Into a screenplay. The number of minutes. When you're looking at the call to action into the... When you're looking at the call to action, is it... Is there a specific distance that it has to happen from the hook? How do you decide when you make that transition?

[Dan] I think it depends very much on the genre that you're writing in. If you are writing a thriller, it needs to be paced very quickly. You need to get the thrill out soon. If you are writing horror, you can wait a long time. Because part of what makes horror work is we get to see this person and live in their life for maybe several chapters, and we have to really love them before we start doing genuinely horrible things to them. If you're writing epic fantasy, just the pacing in general is much more stately and we don't have to rush through things. And so I don't... If you are writing a Hollywood script, there's incredibly specific rules, down to what page the call to action needs to be on. But for books, I think it's a lot more fluid.

[DongWon] I think one thing that I find frustrating in modern media is actually how much the ability to be different depending on the genre has changed.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Like, I'm looking right now, you're wearing a Jaws TV shirt. The time to shark in Jaws is so long compared to time to monster in a contemporary movie. Right? Predator, we're like halfway through the movie before the actual, like, horror stuff starts happening in a lot of ways. Right? And so I think the ability to have that slow burn pacing... Now, those have to be paced more like thrillers and action movies where stuff is popping up very fast, faster, which has this consequence of flattening the landscape. Right? So, being able to have that flexibility of when that plot point one and when that pinch point comes in, I think is really important for telling... For effective storytelling.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. The way I have been reframing it in my head from call to action is here's the question, that this is the point where we introduce the first kind of story question, because I tend to frame things using the MICE quotient. It's like what is... What is the kind of problem that we're going to have to solve? So, with Star Wars, there's a disruption. And then there's also, the big disruption of, hello, here's our capturing of Princess Leia and all of that. But also, Luke also starts with a disruption in his world. That these disruptions are small, they aren't yet the big thing. And, like, that for me is one of the things with the call to action is it's the first thing that says you, character, you're the one who's going to participate in this. That there's often a place where the character could have nope'd out.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] How does that fit with your understanding?

[laughter]

[Dan] We are going to take a break. This is our cliffhanger. We're going to let you all hang on that question, and we'll answer it when we come back.

[Howard] Do you want to sail with us for the Writing Excuses retreat at sea this September? Well, the ship has sold out. But, occasionally, there are cancellations. If you want to be able to jump into a suddenly empty slot, you can. But you'll need to join our waiting list. Visit writingexcuses.com/retreats and follow the instructions to join the wait list. You'll receive an email within a few days to tell you more about current pricing and availability. This is our final annual cruise. We would be delighted to have you join us along the breathtaking Alaskan Coast. So don't hesitate. Visit writingexcuses.com/retreats and you can also join our mailing list there to learn about future events.

[Dan] One of... And this is such a bizarre title to bring into this particular discussion. But one of the movies that I often think about when I'm noodling around with 7 point plot structure is Horrible Bosses.

[DongWon] That is a weird pull.

[Dan] It is a weird pull. It follows the structure very, very well, but it does it in some interesting ways. And kind of the main through line of it... If you're not familiar with Horrible Bosses, it's three friends who all have horrible bosses who decide they're going to, I think, murder Jason Bateman's boss or something like that. Who's played by Kevin Spacey, so he probably deserves it. And the hook is we all have horrible lives, and the call to action is when Jason Bateman's boss refuses to give him time off to go to his grandmother's funeral.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] And that is right in the beginning. It is part of the hook. It is right up front as an illustration of how terrible my life is. But it gives us the call to action in the beginning, because suddenly there's a conflict he has to do something about. And then, his decision is, well, let me get my friends together, we'll kill my boss. Which is a terrible way to solve that problem. But some movies have those really close to each other. Like, in this case, they're right on top of each other. In a more Hollywood formula way, you would call that the big decision moment which usually comes much later. But that's a movie that kind of breaks the formula by moving it up really soon. I don't know if that's a good answer to your question.

[Mary Robinette] I think...

[Dan] But it's what was going through my mind while you were talking.

[Mary Robinette] I think it is. Because it's an illustration of this is a... One thing that is wrong, but then we move on to the next phase, where we put the real pressure on the characters and we force them into action. Which is... Plot point? No...

[Dan] Pinch point one.

[Mary Robinette] Oh my God. I can never remember these.

[Dan] So, the way that I differentiate plot points and pinches is that a plot point is something that helps them on their journey toward the resolution...

[Mary Robinette] Okay.

[Dan] Something that is going to get them closer to that endpoint. Whereas a pinch is something that gets in the way. And that can be an odd way to think about it, because obviously their character arc depends very heavily on those pinches, but it is something that is impeding them that they have to overcome.

[DongWon] So, just to break it down, going back to our Star Wars example. Plot point one is Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen dying, because that gets him out of Tatooine. Pinch point one is we need to find a pilot who will actually take us somewhere.

[Dan] Maybe. I think that there's a couple of examples. Usually what I do when I'm teaching this is I use the Tie Fighter fight in the Millennium Falcon.

[DongWon] Okay.

[Dan] Because it's right at the beginning. It's really kind of a dumb scene.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Dan] Because it doesn't... Some Tie fighters show up, they blow them up, the end. It doesn't kind of lead anywhere.

[DongWon] But was it plot or pinch?

[Dan] That's a pinch.

[DongWon] Okay.

[Dan] The reason that it's there, and the reason that it is kind of a load-bearing moment in the story, is because it is forcing him into action. We need to eventually believe that Luke Skywalker is this incredible fighter pilot who can blow up the Death Star, and so we start off... We need something to get us from farm boy to fighter pilot. And that little scene where he gets in the thing and he blows up some Tie fighters shows us that he has at least some of the skills, and it forces him to act, forces him to step out of his role as farm boy and become something else.

[Howard] Got it.

[Erin] I had a question for you that is not any of this. So, apologies...

[laughter]

[Erin] For taking you off track.

[Dan] No, do it.

[Erin] But when you taught this the first time I heard you teach this, something you said about the lie the character believes about the world, that has always stuck with me. And so I'm curious where that... If you really said that or I hallucinated it, number one, and number two, like, where that falls in here, the idea of, like, the character believing a lie about the world.

[Dan] Yeah. So, the lie the character believes comes from a book about characters by K. M. Weiland. It's a brilliant book. And really great. I think what you are remembering is one of the Writing Excuses cruises. I taught like five different story structure methods over 5 days, and then at the end, we synthesized them all. And so it's a different system, but it does apply to this one. I don't know if they map one to one onto each other, though.

[Howard] One of the things that helps me with the seven-point structure... I've loved 3 act structure for a long time. When I overlay my diagrams of these, pinch point one and pinch point two, for me, often represent the beginning and the end of the try-fail cycle, with the midpoint in the middle. And so I just think about it in those terms. If I'm at a pinch point, and they are trying something and it's wildly successful, I may be constructing the plot wrong. I may have the tension wrong. Because I want to be in try-fail land where we fail more. And at the end of pinch point two, yes, I want things to be bad, but we need to have tried the best thing that isn't going to work. Or maybe the first thing that really does work. And so, for me, framing the pinches in terms of try-fail helps me structure things.

[Mary Robinette] I'm glad you said that, because that combines with something Dan just said, which is the difference between the plot points which are helping the character move... Moving the character towards their goal versus the pinch, which are things getting in their way, is that I recently realized that people are not understanding, when they think about try-fail cycles, I think about them as there's a barrier and you have to do a number of try-fail cycles to get through the barrier, and once you're through the barrier, then there's another barrier and you have to do a bunch of try-fail cycles. And what I will see people do is set up too many barriers, because they want to feel like the character has to really earn it. Using Star Wars as an example, the... Getting off of the ship when they go in to rescue Leia, there's really only two barriers... 3. They have to get past the Stormtroopers, they have to get out of the garbage chute, and then they have to get back onto the ship. Like, there are really only three barriers. But within each of these, there's a bunch of try-fail cycles of how to solve these things. And then there are consequences as they go. But thinking about that, I'm like, oh, okay. So the pinch point is... Like those are often barriers. Like what you were talking about with the Tie fighters. This is preventing the characters from moving towards the goal, whereas the death of Luke's aunt and uncle, that is moving them towards the goal. It's not a success for the character, but it's a push.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Okay. So then moving on from there, then we've got our midpoint. Midpoint, pinch point, plot point two, and the resolution. Can you go through all of those [garbled]

[laughter]

[Dan] All of those as quickly as possible. Midpoint, like the midpoint of Star Wars is what you just talked about. They arrive at the Death Star. They are no longer running away from bad guys, they are enacting a plan. Right? They have been... The tractor beam pulled them in, but now they're doing their own thing, they're trying to rescue the princess. One of my favorite midpoints, and I use movies for most of these examples because then I know most of my audience is familiar with them. One of my favorite examples of a midpoint is actually Toy Story. Because it is a try-fail cycle, but its failure is different. So the midpoint of Toy Story is Woody finally gets rid of Buzz. But instead of knocking him down behind the dresser, he has knocked him out of the window into a car, and now the car is driving away. And he... So, on one hand, he succeeded. He did what he wanted to do. But his goal is to eventually become... His goal is to maintain his role as the beloved favorite toy. And part of that is I can't be the kind of person who kicks another toy out of the window and gets them lost. And so in order to maintain his role, he realizes that his success just turned into a failure at the same time. And so the second half of the movie is very active instead of reactive. He's not reacting to this dumb new toy that he hates, he's actively trying to get that toy back into the house in order to be the good guy that he believes himself to be. And so, it's still part of a try-fail cycle, but it is a success that looks like a failure. Which I love.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] Yeah. And that movement of reaction to action is really important. We are too... I think this is something we see with a lot of superhero fiction, which has taken over so much of media, is heroes are almost always just reacting to the villain. Which ultimately is very weak. I... We could do several episodes of me complaining about what superhero fiction has done to Media. But that's one of the things. You have to have that moment where they start enacting their own plan instead of just constantly reacting to the bad guys.

[Howard] Early days of Writing Excuses, I just started calling that protagging. It's when your protagonist starts being protagonistic.

[Dan] Starts to protag. Yeah. And then, what do we got next? Pinch two. Pinch two is... I mean, the easy pinch two is you lose your mentor. Pinch two is Obi-Wan Kenobi getting killed by Darth Vader. Spoiler warning.

[what?]

[Dan] Pinch two is Gandalf fighting the Balrog and falling and disappearing. And, once again, the purpose of the pinch is to force the characters to act for themselves. They cannot rely on the person who's been guiding them this whole time. They have to strike out on their own. What the pinches have done both times is get in their way, taken away some kind of advantage that they have, all ultimately in the service of turning them into the kind of person who can achieve the resolution.

[Mary Robinette] I find that one of the things that that does, because we see that kind of moment in a bunch of the different plot structures. And I think that one of the things it does is it also serves as a point of contrast. So that we'll see it in the cave, the darkness before the dawn kind of situations. But it serves as a contrast, so that when we get to our victory state, that there is a bigger movement from that moment, so that contrast makes the cathartic release bigger. So I think that that's one of the things it does. I sometimes think of it as there's the... It can be a bunch of different things. It can be the removal of the mentor, which is removing a crutch, which allows the character to become more fully actualized. But I think there's a bunch of different reasons that that particular piece is there.

[DongWon] Yeah. It also feels important that it comes after the turn to action.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Right? You switch from reaction to action, and then something goes deeply wrong, and you have that, oh, no, what have we done? But then that creates the opportunity for the doubling down, for the push, for the eventual catharsis. Right?

[Howard] One of the helpful ways that, for me, that the terminology works. I think of the pinch not as being smushed or actually pinched, but a narrowing of my options. You have taken away from me some of the paths... You took away my mentor. I can no longer... I no longer have a path that is Obi-Wan does all the work. It just... You restricted my options. Pinch point one. And then we have midpoint, which was everything you said, and then my options got narrower again, leading me into plot turn two, where, depending on the type of story we're telling, I've figured it out. I'm out of my try-fail cycle, and we are now... I have powered up all of the things that I know how to do, and we see if it works in our resolution.

[Dan] Yeah. The... Pinch point two of Toy Story is the moment where Buzz realizes he's a toy and suddenly doesn't care about anything anymore. He's like, if I'm not this great hero I thought I was, then I may as well just stay here in the creepy kid's house with all of the monster toys and nothing matters. And that makes Woody's job harder, because now the person he's trying to save doesn't want to be saved anymore. He can't just drag him back up the side of the house and through the window. But it's a good example of that I have lost more of my options. And now the single only option left to Woody is that he has to genuinely become friends with this person in order to save him. The one thing he hasn't wanted to do at all. Which goes back, if we had time, and we're already overtime, goes back to what you were talking about, Erin, with the lie the character believes. And that hinges on the thing the character wants versus the thing the character needs.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Dan] What Woody actually needs is to become a good person, rather than just be a respected person. And so, that's... The purpose of pinch two is to take away all those other avenues. And then we get to plot point two. We've been talking so much about try-fail cycles. Plot point two is really the try-try moment. The try-succeed moment. Where you finally get it together. You know what you have to do in order to win. You are able to... Luke turns off his targeting computer and he uses the force. That's what is going to help him succeed. Woody decides, you know what, we're just going to break the rules and we're going to talk to this kid and freak him out and that's how we're going to succeed.

[DongWon] So where is the line between plot two and resolution? Right? If plot two is the character resolving the want and need conflict into one thing. Right? Then how does resolution come into play? At that point?

[Dan] I think of resolution as a state rather than an action or a decision.

[DongWon] Interesting.

[Dan] And so, plot turn two is this is where...

[DongWon] [garbled] would call denoument in a different structure.

[Dan] Yeah. Yeah. Plot turn two is some kind of fuzzy combination of I know how to win and I actually carry it out and I win. And then resolution is here's who I have become now that I'm at the end of this story.

[Mary Robinette] And in mystery, what we see, I think, with this is we understand who the villain is. That's the... We get the clue that gives us, in plot point two, we get the final piece of the puzzle. This is the thing that gives us the clue, but then the resolution is we still have to apprehend and take them to justice.

[DongWon] Yeah. In the horror movie, this is the final reel, driving away into the sunrise, where you finally... From whatever happened.

[Dan] So if we were to break this out into Hollywood formula, for example, there would be a much bigger difference, like you say, Mary Robinette, between I know how to do this versus I'm actually going to do this. You have to carry it out and make it happen. And different stories will have those moments very close to each other or very far apart from each other. Again, it depends on the pacing that you're going for and the effect you're trying to create.

[Howard] I honestly believe that if you can write a story that follows this seven-point structure, and then you look at it and you realize, oh, but the minutes are wrong for it to be a screenplay, I need for it to be a screenplay, you've already done the hard part. Shaving things to move these points around is going to be easy. And it's one of the reasons why I feel like the seven-point structure is so useful, because it can get you from word zero to draft complete quickly and sensibly in a way that lets you easily edit for whatever effect you really want.

[Mary Robinette] And one of the things... We'll say this, and then we'll start... We'll move over to homework. But one of the things that I hope that you were hearing as you're listening to us is that this is a plot structure that, like the other plot structures we're discussing, that you can apply to a lot of different stories. But it also, like a recipe, still makes a specific kind of thing. Like, this is going to be really good for character stories, for action-driven things, for places where you want someone to succeed. But if you are doing something that is more experimental or literary, this particular recipe may not be the recipe that you work with. So, having said all of that, what homework would you like to give people for playing with seven point plot structure?

[Dan] So, the main way that I use this plot structure today in my writing is to figure out subplots. I know what my big overall plot is going to be, but I need to figure out how these two characters are going to fall in love or something like that. I need to figure out how this betrayal of a side character is going to work. And seven point is a good way to flesh that out. And it... Without just saying, well, there's going to be three tries and two fails, and then they'll succeed at the end. It gives you a nice up and down with the plot points versus the pinch points, and it helps me assemble side plots really well. So what I want you to do is take a book that you're working on or a story that you're working on that has a side thing. Don't worry about turning your entire novel into this. Just take that side plot, that subplot, and sketch it out in seven point. Let's say you want two characters to fall in love. Well, that's your resolution. What's the opposite state of that? How are you going to express that as a conflict we want to see resolved? What is the midpoint, where they move from hating each other to loving each other? How are you going to set up the pinches and the plot points to give texture to that relationship? And that will give you a really good sense of how this works.

[Mary Robinette] And we'll have a link in our show notes to the seven points that go in the seven point plot structure. So...

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.